George is an 18 month old cavoodle who presented signs of nervousness since I brought him home at 8 weeks. I am a first time dog owner (I had dogs growing up and mistakenly thought I had some knowledge). I dutifully read all the puppy information regarding the importance of early socialisation.
I had researched the breed and felt I made a reasoned choice based on my lifestyle and living arrangements.
There is a lot of information out there and it's quite overwhelming. I felt the pressure to expose my puppy to a variety of environments/stimuli within the critical period. I didn't see anything in the puppy books about how to look out for signs of anxiety and how you might adjust/reassess your approach and/or seek professional help.
I was slow to recognise the signs (thinking he was just a bit nervous) and was surprised when the reactivity started to show at around 7 months.
At 9 months, we had been working through the reactivity and were in a good place - he was growing in confidence and was reliably off-lead in a number of places. He was mostly indifferent to dogs, people and children and had very good focus on me around distractions. I continued with my socialisation plan of visiting lots of different places.
A couple of incidents then occurred in a relatively short space of time. First, he was chased by a big young dog - in play but with none of the normal play signals and he was genuinely terrified. Then a week later he was approached by a seemingly friendly dog who then rushed at him snarling and knocked him over. At the time he seemed to shake it off.
Cue severe reactivity. From there it got worse and worse: he would lunge and bark at everyone and everything, he had extreme noise sensitivity to the slightest noise at home, barked and paced for hours on end, barked and lunged at everything in the car, and eventually was scared to toilet in the garden or leave the house.
I thought that with love and patience, we could work through it. George got more and more stressed, barely rested (he was never a good sleeper as a puppy) and the spiral continued.
At the end of my tether, at 13 months old, I sought advice from a veterinary behaviourist and trainer and we formulated a treatment and behaviour modification plan. It's a long road but now we have help and support.
We've tried several different meds and are currently taking three...all of which help in different ways. We're still in the tweaking stage but I can confirm that the meds seem to be doing what they are meant to do:
- reduce distance (to react to triggers);
- reduce duration (of reactions);
- improve recovery time (George recovers from being over-threshold much more quickly);
- and reduce generalised anxiety.
The rest is down to me.
We will gently reintroduce the triggers and build that positive association. I'm very pleased to say that we now have the space to do that and can see triggers in the distance without an immediate meltdown.
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